Sis. Chiu Hea Hills
21-10-2018
Guilt and shame are often used interchangeably. They are like twins but they are not identical.
Guilt and shame both make us feel bad.
They were both born in the Garden of Eden as a result of sin. Genesis 2 is the story of how God made Eve out of the ribs of Adam. And when He brought her to Adam, Adam just went into this wonderful praise: bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23) He felt so close and intimate to her like she was really part of him.
And that chapter ends with this one sentence: Adam and his wife were naked and unashamed. (Genesis 2:25)
The word unashamed appeared as a harbinger or foreshadow of what was going to happen next in chapter 3.
In chapter 3, Satan came to Eve and tempted her to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Basically he was telling her that who she was was not enough. She might have been a bit naive and she wanted to have her eyes open so that she could become wise like God. She took it and have it to her husband to eat as well. As soon as that happened, their eyes were open and they realised they were naked and shame came into the picture for the first time ever. They were guilty of breaking God's law and within minutes shame came. So guilt and shame were born just minutes apart.
Obviously God gave us a capacity to feel these things. In Jeremiah, He said to the people of Israel, "Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? No! They were not at all ashamed nor did they know how to blush.” (Jeremiah 6:15)
It turns out that being shameless is the problem.
Our shame was supposed to make us
come back to God and seek Him out.
In Hosea, God says, "I will return again to my place until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face, and in their distress earnestly seek me." (Hosea 5:5)
Guilt and shame have this ability to make us miserable so that our misery drives us back to God.
Unfortunately, often it doesn't do that. It makes us go the other way.
But guilt and shame cause us to get disconnected from God and disconnected from each other. When Adam and Eve heard God coming in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the day, they covered themselves first with fig leaves and then they ran into the shadows of the trees to hide. (Genesis 3:8) The both of them hid behind the fog leaves and they hid behind the trees. And God came and looked for them and said, "Where are you?" (Genesis 3:8) It was more of "Where are you in relationship with Me and with each other?"
Neuroscientists tell us that when shame descend into our brain, it causes our limbic system to cause us to do the fight or flight response. And Adam and Eve did both. First they ran and Adam actually came out looking to pick a fight when God asked him," Did you eat from this tree?" Instead of a simple yes, he confessed what he did and said, "The woman that You put here with me..." He was blaming Eve and God. (Genesis 3:12)
Right away, shame makes us very defensive and we start blaming people.
What was it like for Eve to stand in the presence of her husband and hearing him talk about her as a woman? It's so cold. It's like pushing her to the other side and say, "You're not with me anymore. We're not on the same team. You are now my opponent."
Right away you see the tearing away of their intimacy and their union. Sin always causes us to separate from people, to blaming and to running and hiding. It separates God from His people and also from ourselves because shame makes us really dislike ourselves. When you hate somebody, you don't want to spend time with them. People who are guilty and ashamed, they become very alienated from their own self. They don't want to spend time alone in reflecting and being close to themselves and knowing themselves. They just want to run by being distracted and busy and so on and so forth.
Guilt and shame always disconnects in three ways.
What are the main differences?
1) Guilt and shame have a different voice.
Guilt: "I did something bad."
Shame: "I am bad."
Guilt: "I made a mistake."
Shame: "I am a mistake."
Guilt is really about something you did. It's your behaviour.
Shame is about who you are and the core of what you believe about yourself.
Examine yourself. How do you talk to yourself when you made a mistake?
2) Guilt can be very helpful. When you feel guilty about something, it is actually very motivating. It motivates you to go back and apologise, to confess to God and apologise to the person you did something wrong to, and fix it, make it right. It motivates us to clean up before God.
Shame often makes us run and hide in the shadow. It makes it worse. We get stuck and feel we are a bad person. Shame is like that monster that grows in the darkness and the darkness actually makes it grow bigger. But when you put it in the light, the monster starts to shrink, like radiation therapy.
Shame is highly correlated to depression, suicide, bullying, aggression, eating disorders and addictions.
Shame is really disruptive.
3) Guilt is localised. When you do something wrong, the guilty person is the one that feels guilty.
On the other hand, shame is contagious. You may have done nothing wrong but you feel shame because the person's wrongdoing affect you. For example, childhood sexual abuse victims. Shame is more destructive than guilt.
Every human being experiences shame. When you are actually experiencing guilt and shame, that's a good thing because you're not a sociopath.
Shame is like a feeling that we have before. This feeling can come and go. The problem is when the feeling of shame comes, it doesn't go and it just stays. This is known as shame-based or - bound identity. For example, when you describe a person as an angry man, it's as though he is always angry and it's part of his personality and identity.
Causes of shame:
John Bradshaw in his book "Healing The Shame That Binds You" talks about how shame can be cultivated by families who are performance-based, perfectionistic, very critical and use a lot of comparisons to motivate their children.
Performance-based is basically: "You are only valued as a child by what you do. You're not really loved for who you are but for your performance, accomplishments and achievements." I'm some ways, performance-based families can produce very successful children because they are all striving to get the love and attention of their parents.
Perfectionism is a big problem. If you value only what you do, then you want to look perfect and you want to do everything perfectly so nobody can blame you or put you down or make you feel small. These families will always look to criticise and blame and finding fault and using words that are always shaming like "Useless, idiot, stupid. Can't you do anything right?" They really know how to make you feel small and inferior. This is very Asian.
Toxic shame is not only destructive but also poisonous.
Toxic shame can arise from neglect, abandonment, abuse and adoption.
We are created for relationship and
connection. Neuroscientists say our brains are hard-wired so seek connection.
This same experiment had been done with people of all ages, including
four-month old baby. The result is always the same. When the connection is
broken, that person really desperately tries to get attention back. As far as
the brain is concerned, the physical pain and emotional pain of rejection is
the same. When we are hurt emotionally, it is almost genuinely physically
painful. Continuous neglect and lack of attention can produce an identity based
on shame.
According to John Bradshaw, toxic shame is true agony. This pain is felt from the inside--the core of your being. He knows this because of his background of childhood sexual abuse.
Consequences of shame:
1) People-pleasing
2)
Envy
3)
Gossip
4)
Co-dependency
5)
Staying invisible
6)
Pride and arrogance
7)
Criticism and blame
8)
Addictions
Learn how to comfort ourselves when we feel pain. Comfort in a way that is healthy.
Shame is the thing that drives you to addiction. But when you do the things that make you feel better, you feel more shame. When you feel more shame, you reach for the things that make you feel better which is the drug again. This is how the shame cycle makes the addiction go deeper and deeper. But this shame has to be healed.
Like Adam and Eve, we also have our own fig leaves. Meaning, we come up with strategies to cover up the shame that we feel. For example, being driven by accomplishments at the cost of relationships. Or social avoidance. Or trophies (eg. pushing children to succeed because it makes the parents look better). Or masks (you pretend to be somebody you are really not).
The good news?
Brené Brown spent six years studying shame and doing research about shame. One day she looked at her data and discovered that the one essential ingredient to wholehearted living is vulnerability. She had a mental breakdown.
In the world today, people are so
hungry for real relationships and to know and to be known who you really are.
If we are behind the mask, we can never have a genuine heart to heart
connection. Remember, we are created for that real connection.
"The intention and outcome of vulnerability is trust, intimacy and connection. The outcome of oversharing is distrust, disconnection - and usually a little judgment."
-
Brené Brown
"Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage."
-
Brené Brown
"If you put shame in a Petri dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in a Petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can’t survive."
-
Brené Brown
"If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can't survive."
-
Brené Brown
In his research entitled Disclosure of traumas and health among Holocaust survivors, James W. Pennebaker discovered that the survivors health actually goes down if they do not share their stories with somebody. But when they can confide in somebody, their immune system went up, visits to the doctors went down, their cortisol level and stress level also went down.
There is actually a health benefit to not suppressing your shame.
The way out of shame is not into hiding, covering with the fig leaves and running to the shadows. It is running towards people.
For us, it is also running to God. We have the capacity for guilt and shame. Turn towards God and find our hiding place in Him.
Matthew 23:37-39 New King James Version (NKJV)
Jesus
Laments over Jerusalem
37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and
stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children
together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not
willing! 38 See! Your house is left to you desolate; 39 for I say to you, you shall
see Me no more till you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’
”
Mark 14:32-36 New King James Version (NKJV)
The Prayer in the Garden
32 Then they came to a place which was named Gethsemane; and He
said to His disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” 33 And He took Peter, James,
and John with Him, and He began to be troubled and deeply distressed. 34 Then
He said to them, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here
and watch.”
35 He went a little farther, and fell on the ground, and prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass from Him. 36 And He said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for You. Take this cup away from Me; nevertheless, not what I will, but what You will.”
Jesus showed us the way how to be vulnerable. He was perfect. But He was not afraid to show His weakness. Jesus wept several times. He's not afraid to cry in front of people. We can really shut down our tears but Jesus modelled a way for us. Out of our pain, he wept.
Jesus was not afraid of asking for
help. Asking for help doesn't mean you are needy; it means you are human. And
Jesus showed us the way to lean on our friends when He was going through a very
hard time.
God meant for us to connect when we
are in pain, to run to Him and to run to people.
Sometimes it's not so easy. The
psalmist who wrote Psalm 32 was dealing with unconfessed sin.
Psalm 32:3 New International
Version (NIV)
3 When I kept silent,
my bones wasted away
through my groaning
all day long.
Psalm 32:3 New International
Version (NIV)
5 Then I acknowledged my sin to you
and did not cover up
my iniquity.
I said, “I will confess
my transgressions to
the Lord.”
And you forgave
the guilt of my sin.
God knows this about us that when
we don't confess our sins, it will affect our medical health. It will make us
feel exhausted and drained.
Try this and see what happens. If
there is somebody that you feel you owe an apology to, try this experiment.
Have the courage to write them a text message. See how that makes you feel
afterwards. You'll feel so much lighter.
This is us. We make messes every
day. Put some energy into cleaning up. Take the courage to apologise and you'll
see how much lighter you feel and how much more energy you feel.
James 5:14-15 New International
Version (NIV)
14 Is anyone among you sick? Let
them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil
in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick
person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be
forgiven.
Pray for each other so that you may
be healed. This is also another connection that physical healing and
unconfessed sin go hand in hand.
I would love to see more of this
happening in the church.
This confession happens a lot in addiction
and recovery community.
We need to have the courage to look
at the wrong things we have done. We go the person that we had injured and we
make amends with them whenever possible.
Be real with people. It's not worth
it to have so many superficial relationships. We are made be known and to know.
And to have genuine relationships. And it makes us come alive. Just like the
baby. But when we have this connection because of our masks and fig leaves,
it's such a huge loss of joy in life.
The song You Are My Hiding Place
starts with:
You are my hiding place
You always fill my heart
With songs of deliverance
Psalm 32:7 New International
Version (NIV)
7 You are my hiding place;
you will protect me
from trouble
and surround me with
songs of deliverance.
Lo and behold! This is the same
psalmist who wrote "When I didn't confess my sin, my bones are wasted
away."
This is in the context of someone
struggling with guilt and unconfessed sin. God wants us to run to Him. He is
our hiding place. He is our safest hiding place.
Romans 8:1 New International
Version (NIV)
Life Through the Spirit
8 Therefore, there is now no
condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,
We see this in Jesus in how He
dealt with the woman that was caught in bed with a man who was not her husband.
She was caught for adultery, was brought before Jesus and was condemned by
everyone.
John 8:7-11 New International
Version (NIV)
7 When they kept on questioning him,
he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be
the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the
ground.
9 At this, those who heard began to
go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with
the woman still standing there. 10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman,
where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
11 “No one, sir,” she said.
“Then neither do I condemn you,”
Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
This is Jesus. "I do not
condemn you. Go. And sin no more."
It is safe to run to God. There is
no condemnation.
1 John 3:20 New International
Version (NIV)
20 If our hearts condemn us, we know
that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.
We are accepted into the beloved.
God gives us a covering of grace. Right from the beginning, He asked,
"Give Me your fig leaves. I have something better to give you." In
time, God became a tailor. He made a much better outfit for them.
Genesis 3:21 New International
Version (NIV)
21 The Lord God made garments of
skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.
He covered their shame. Even that
is gracious.
God punished Adam and Eve by
sending them out of the Garden of Eden but He sent them out so that they would
not take from the tree of life. He didn't want them to live forever in a
sinful, fallen state. He would make another way for them to live forever with
Him, not in a fallen state but, in a redeemed state. Even when He was punishing
Adam and Eve, there was plenty of grace in that.
Another story of grace is the
prodigal son where Jesus gave this story to illustrate God's heart for the
people who have been shamed. The prodigal son told his father, "I can't
wait for you to die. I just want your money so that I can go and have my
life." It is very dishonouring and hurtful. He went on and have his crazy
life and ended up in the pigsty. He returned and you see how the father ran
towards him. In the Middle East, older men never run. But this older man ran.
He lowered his dignity. He dishonoured himself in the face of society by
running towards his son in order to honour his son.
Our Father is so good. When we are
covered in all our sin and shame and we return towards Him, not only does He
wait for us, He runs towards us. This is the picture that Jesus painted. God is
so eager to reconnect with us.
Finally, the identity makeover. The
core of shame is a shamed identity (worthless, unworthy, not loveable etc). God
is saying, "Your identity is in Me. You are made in My image. You are
fearfully and wonderfully made. You are My handiwork. You are My poem."
We are hidden in Christ. We hide in
God. And because we are hidden in God, all of these things are true.
"You are chosen. You are
redeemed. You are dearly loved with the seal of the Holy Spirit. You are a
dwelling place. You are a temple of God. God will supply all your needs
according to the glorious riches in Christ."
When you are in shame, hang on to
these truths.
The question of your value is
settled at the Cross.
The Cross is the answer to our
guilt and shame. The Cross is saying that you are so valuable that you are
worth the death of Christ and you have been bought with that precious blood.
Jesus can take our shame and give
us a new identity. The woman who was so shameful and everyone called her an
immoral woman came to Christ's feet and wiped with her hair and anointed His
feet with perfume. Jesus gave her a new label. He said, "This was a woman
who loved much." Jesus changed her identity.
Hebrews 11:11 New International
Version (NIV)
11 And by faith even Sarah, who was
past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she[a] considered
him faithful who had made the promise.
Was Sarah actually a woman of
faith? She actually did something very wrong and very sinful. She didn't really
believe that she was going to have a son so she offered Hagar to Abraham as a
second wife. God rewrote her history. God cancelled her sin and she is
remembered as a woman of faith. The people who are forgiven and come out of
deep shame make the best worshipers and the best lovers of God. When you
have hit the pits, your praise rises higher.
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